From the outer reaches of electronica comes Coppé,
engaged in a furious mission to save pop music from
utter blandness. In just five years and no less than
eight albums, Coppé has scattered her impressively
original and unique music across the globe, from Arizona
where she spent a few years, to Honolulu and finally
back to Tokyo.
Since releasing her self-titled debut album in 1999,
on her own imprint, Mango & Sweet Rice, Coppé
has developed into one of the most interesting and underrated
artists of her generations, producing records evoking
in turn the sheer beauty of Björk’s
contrasted sonic terrains, the sense for oblique melodies
of Nicolette or the dark emotions of Portishead combined
with stark electronic textures. From the beautiful atmospheric
moments found on Papa
My Buddha, an album she recorded while her
father was in hospital, or last year’s superb
Nauru, to the
resolutely more upfront drum’n’bass-fueled
Mercury,
recorded with London duo The Program, Coppé has
the capacity to constantly transform her sound, yet
retain its very essence. Despite remaining until now
pretty unknown, she has worked with an incredibly diverse
array of people, from DJ Vadim to Plaid
and one-time Orb member Kris Weston, aka Thrash.
For her eighth album, Coppé teams up once again
with Bryan Breen, who has recently been signed to Plug
Research with his Back Ted ‘n Ted project. The
pair previously worked together on Papa
My Buddha, one of Coppé’s most
accessible records to date, and her most emotionally
charged, and Nauru.
If some of the pop sensibilities of Papa
My Buddha can still be felt here (I Lick
My Brain In Silence, Zojoji, Queen
Of The Sea), there is an element of perversion
running throughout this record as the pair explore far
less conventional grounds. Decidedly in experimental
mood, Coppé and Breen dissect melodies and sonic
ambiences to reveal their core nature, exposing each
element in its purest form. Here, the subtle rhythmic
structures of Pomegranate Tears or Blue
have been replaced with knife-sharp beats and the delicate
swathes of warm sounds of Humu Humu Picasso Fish
or Paper Soap have been swapped for earthy,
often grainy atmospheric waves. Yet it is Coppé’s
deliciously acid voice that emerges loud and clear out
of these sonic shards, highlighting the highly human
aspect of the music and its intense emotional impact.
In turn soft-spoken Björk,
Beth Gibbons with
attitude or spaced-out Billie Holiday, Coppé
has long defined her own environment, happily putting
her voice through a variety of electronic devices to
transform it at will, or exposing it in its barest form,
sometimes both at once, in order to create something
totally unique. But Coppé doesn’t rely
entirely on her voice. Ryski’s Instu’mental
Trip is, as its title suggests, entirely instrumental.
Built around an ambient melody and a slumbering hip-hop
beat, the track morphs into a Casio-lead waltz evoking
some of Jimi Tenor’s
cheesiest moment. But the real treat on this album is
to be found in the epic thirty-minute long Ryski’s
Hidden Treasure, which closes the album. This slow-moving
piece presents beautiful organic drones wrapped around
metallic percussions, found sounds, voice samples and,
in the last section of the track, live drums. These
drones continuously evolve, develop and die to create
one of Coppé’s most accomplished moments.
With this eighth album, Coppé continues to develop
her fascinating musical persona with aplomb, asserting
once again her unique position on the electronic scene.
This album demonstrates, if it was still necessary,
why she has over the years worked with so many high
profile musicians, and one can only hope to one day
see her receive the attention she deserves.
4.4/5 |
